I have chosen this 'monster' to represent problems with my dissertation committee. If you saw the earlier post, you may know that I have 7 'monsters,' each of which will represent a type of challenge I face over the course of my dissertation. I hope that I do not end up with 7 different types of challenge! I have chosen the many-eyed creature above to represent committee issues - since all of those folks need to read this document (and, for the most part, have already read the proposal). Click on the 'read more' link to see the history (so far) of my committee: My dissertation committee at the public university I attend consists of a minimum of 4 individuals, 3 of whom are from my home department and 1 who is considered external and is faculty in another department. My academic adviser is the chair. I do not know if that is always the case, but our program has a 'mentoring' structure which means that an adviser must accept a student as his/her student based on similarity of research interests. My particular program has 2.5 faculty and only one with research interests that include health promotion through physical activity, so not only is this person my adviser, this person is also my committee chair. So, on to the history of my committee:
I initially had some difficulty identifying potential external committee members. I developed a mixed qualitative and quantitative research project which leans toward qualitative inquiry. Since faculty in my department tend to be stronger in quantitative methods, I had hoped to find an external person with qualitative expertise. I did in fact identify such a person but the person respectfully declined to be on my committee due to the person's status as new, not yet tenured faculty. A second faculty member from another department decline due to lack of comfort with my subject matter. In the meanwhile, I had 'recruited' two additional faculty members from my department. I suddenly realized that there was a very viable external person who had similar interest, and who I knew on a personal basis, working in another academic department. I contacted and met with this person, and now I had my external person. I continued to work on the proposal document and chose a tentative proposal date in April - one of few weeks during the semester that my adviser was available. However, before spring break, one of my committee members resigned from the university to take another job beginning in fall of 2013. After a very pleasant discussion, I essentially told the individual that I did not think it was fair to ask someone to remain on a committee at their former university while trying to get settled into a new job. This individual would have been willing to stay on the committee had I asked, and I do appreciate that. I was left with a diminishing pool of candidates because my academic department represents 3 disciplines, two of which have subdisciplines, so there are lots of people with fairly narrow interests. This departure left me with the opportunity, however, to recruit onto my committee a person who did have some prior mixed methods experience and who had also completed a journal article rather than traditional dissertation, which is what I planned to propose. This relatively new faculty member, whose research interests were not necessarily similar but were not inconsistent (and whose personal background reflects a good deal of recreation/activity participation) agreed to serve as the replacement person. In short order, I held a pre-proposal meeting, wrote and disseminated the proposal document and held a formal proposal meeting. It seemed like things were going as expected, then I was told that my adviser was leaving to take a chair position at another university. Our university policy states that the absent adviser/committee chair can only serve as a co-chair with another committee member also acting as co-chair. Seems like it should be a simple thing to handle, but....no one currently on my committee had been promoted to full or associate professor. So, I now need to add another committee member, and have very few choices remaining. Counting transfer/promotion and resignation from the university, 5 individuals who were full time faculty as of fall of 2012-13 will not return as full time department faculty in 2013-14; one who is remaining is going to serve as interim chair so is taking on a great deal of responsibility. I also want to get the feedback of the rest of the committee in this decision process, as this seems only right. I could 'drop' a person but I have been told that it is OK to have an excess member, so at present, I plan to have a committee of 5, not 4. Unfortunately, summer is not always the best time to get in touch with 9 month faculty. Also, a couple of times along the way, people asked me why I chose the people I did choose - and I heard a rumor (and we all know how much faith to put in those) that one of my other committee members was 'dissed' in a program meeting. Some of this reminds me of picking teams back in 2nd grade. Anyway, to recap: 3 potential external offers made before one was accepted 1 of 3 original members replaced Committee chair resigned from the university Small number of individuals eligible to fill the co-chair spot, interest level unknown.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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